DeBakey legacy lives on in Baylor medical humanities scholarship

Dr. Michael DeBakey joined the Baylor University family in 1948, when he joined the Baylor College of Medicine faculty (more than 20 years before the college became an independent institution). His accomplishments are too numerous to detail here — that would be its own blog post — but Dr. DeBakey’s New York Times obituary from 2008 gives a great rundown.

The medical humanities program takes a unique approach to educating the doctors of tomorrow by incorporating the insights of disciplines ranging from literature to economics to religion into the practice of modern scientific medicine. The idea behind the program (which is now being emulated at other universities) is to produce Baylor graduates with not only the scientific background necessary for a career in medicine, but also a sense of human understanding that will allow physicians to care for their patients as people.